Târgu Jiu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˌtɨrɡu ˈʒiw], is the capital of Gorj County in the Oltenia region of Romania.

During the digging of the Târgu Jiu - Rovinari railroad, mosaics, coins, ceramics and Roman bricks were found in the south-eastern part of the city.

After the 271 withdrawal of the Roman army, the city remained in the Latin influence zone, mainly because of Constantine The Great's involvement in Oltenia which he sought to bring under imperial rule.

The importance of keeping this zone under Rome's control was underlined by Constantine's decision to build a second bridge over the Danube between today's Corabia (then Sucidava) and the Bulgarian city of Gigen.

Constantin Brâncuși, who had lived here as a boy, was commissioned to contribute to a memorial monument to the fighters of World War I, called Calea Eroilor, "Heroes' Street", which was finished in 1938.

His large sculptures are now the main tourist attractions in Târgu Jiu: The Table of Silence, Stool Alley, The Gate of the Kiss, and The Endless Column.

Other local industries include wood, machine building, textiles, glassware and construction materials (cement, bricks, and tiles).

Mihai Radu, a Romanian architect based in New York, described Târgu Jiu's downtown - rebuilt during the Communist era - as little more than "a mix of poorly maintained paving, disheveled mass housing, jumbled signage and buildings of every size and description".

Representing the interior space of Brâncuși's ensemble, the Calea Eroilor - otherwise an unprepossessing, uninspiring and "unacceptably vernacular" street - defines through his sculptures the town's civic areas in the same manner as the Great Axis of Paris.

[5] Brâncuși's work in Târgu Jiu is “absolutely revolutionary”: the sculptures exist at the same time as conventional public art with multiple meanings and as functional structures (seats, gateway, monumental marker).

A small-town Romanian fabric merged with a sculptural ensemble of world significance makes Târgu Jiu's plural urbanism astonishing.